Haunted Souls
by whereismyymiind
Summary: Each person carries something which plagues their inner being. This is a story of breaking free of your restrictions while remembering not to lose control and how whether it is a one-of-a-kind friendship, a selfless love or complete and utter devotion, your connections with the people around you can help you create the perfect balance. This is a story of three different viewpoints.


Disclaimer: I barely own an imagination, so I'd never claim an idea as grand as Shaman King.

* * *

 **Chapter 1**

 **Sleeping With Ghosts**

* * *

It was late afternoon when it happened. The sky was bathed in red from the sun's slow decline. And so was the street, dark liquid seeping into the concrete as bystanders stood gaping and crying out in horror. Only two were still struggling to breathe. And as sirens drew closer, Satsuki could swear she could hear the hauntingly detached sound of eerie laughter in her adrenaline-filled ears before she blacked out.

\- xxx -

"I really saw it! There were ghosts at the cemetery! They were watching the stars!" Just before class, a short midget of a seventh grader erupted in a loud fit of explanations, astonishment exerting his gestures. His peculiar statement made one of his female classmates seated by the windows freeze in the middle of rereading her English essay. The boy's name was Oyamada Manta, the girl knew, a normal overachiever that she'd never expected to have something as outrageous as that come out of his mouth. "This is me we're talking about! Are you doubting my eyes?!" Visibly bothered by his words, the girl made an effort to remain impassive and ignore the scene unfolding at the other side of the classroom but the tight grip on the previously smooth edges of the neatly filled out papers in her shaking hands betrayed her uneasiness.

"No, Manta, I doubt your head," another classmate deadpanned, irritating the short midget of a boy, "There are no such things as ghosts!"

The girl seated by the windows involuntarily crumpled her papers, no longer concentrated on the English text she'd carefully composed.

"Maybe you saw wrong?" another among the small group surrounding Manta quipped with a skeptical look.

The girl by the windows bit her lip as cold sweat threatened to spill down her face.

"Maybe your brain got messed up from too much studying," the last of Manta's listeners said with a mocking grin.

The girl by the windows had shut her eyes tight in attempt to ignore them, but her hands that were choking her English essay began shaking, threatening to rip the crumpled papers in half.

"Maybe he's been possessed," the first boy concluded and the entire group exploded in laughter, further angering a frustrated Manta.

The classroom door slammed shut, silencing their voices, as the three making fun of Manta briefly wondered what had caused it. On the other side of the door the girl from the desk by the windows slid a hand across her face and through her dark bangs in attempt to alleviate her panic as she leaned her back against the door.

"I'm such a coward..." she whispered aimlessly to the empty corridor, staring blankly through the third floor windows of Shinra Private School's inner courtyard where the top branches of green trees lazily swayed to the soft pushes of the wind.

"Kaname-kun?"

Eyes green as leaves met tree bark dark brown when the girl noticed her homeroom teacher approaching with a strange boy in his wake. He was wearing the school uniform all wrong with his shirt open, sleeves wound up to his elbows, and casual wooden sandals on bare feet. It slightly bothered her, since she was used to pedantry and following rules, but the boy's easygoing appearance of a slacker felt oddly refreshing and she thought the out-of-place bear pendant and the large orange headphones suited him in a funny way.

"Kaname-kun!" She blinked. They were already right in front of her and her homeroom teacher had been calling her last name for the good part of a minute. "Do you feel unwell?"

"Ah, well, I guess..." She awkwardly moved her gaze away from the two as the strange boy stared at her with his dark eyes lazy like the swaying treetops.

The teacher sighed. "If you haven't been sleeping again, you should go rest at the nurse's office. I'll excuse your absence." The girl mutely nodded, gaze once again fixed on the courtyard greenery as a lone leaf was blown away and ascended out of sight. The man continued, "At least try to take care of yourself. I know it must be hard for you but it's been some time since the accident and you've fully recovered from your hospitalization. It's normally not my business, but at this important time of your youth you're expected to remove yourself from any distractions from your education." Taking her silence as a reluctant agreement, the man decided he had said enough. "You've shown so much promise up until now and we expect you to do so in the future as a student of this establishment. At least try to make an effort to return to your normal self, Kaname-kun." Her homeroom teacher entered the classroom, followed by the strange boy that curiously gave her another sideways glance.

Frowning slightly at the treetops outside that had abandoned another set of leaves, the girl began walking along the corridor in the completely opposite direction of where the nurse's office was. She descended the stairs, changed to outdoor shoes at the shoeboxes and strode past the school gate, disregarding the thought of school altogether.

\- xxx -

"Satsuki! What a surprise!" a dyed redhead with bright brown eyes and long hair under a baggy olive beanie with a couple of pins grinned widely at the newcomer, sunshine radiating from her cheerful face smudged in the splotches of paint that marred her P.E. uniform all the way from her red jersey tied over black shorts, up to the white t-shirt over a black tank top. Even her trainers, black socks and sports wristbands were covered in it. "What are you doing here?"

The other girl shrugged mutely in her prim and proper school uniform, more interested in the project the redhead was working on in the middle of the abandoned tram tunnel. The place was riddled with dust, trash and dried-up weeds, an overturned dirty old broken beige couch and several forgotten moldy barrels about, which were probably used by homeless people to set fire and warm up in winter nights. The red haired girl had various colorful spray cans littered around her feet, most of which had already been used up on the large eye-catching bold letters covering the already peeling dull gray paint of the moldy wall which spelled out "Be kind to mother nature and she'll love you in return". The paint smelt like it was still fresh and the redhead was spraying finishing touches of white on the image of an ethereally beautiful mother nature with glistening tears in her closed eyes whose bust and joined hands in a prayer towered over the overly long slogan, wavy green hair twined with flowers sprawled to blend with the colorful letters below.

"Don't tell me you ditched school again!" The redhead's smile turned into a displeased frown when her dark haired friend didn't deny the accusation so she directed her attention away from her masterpiece. "Satsuki! You know you should stop doing things like that or your parents will never let us hang out! You were the one who said they grounded you because they think I'm a bad influence! Stop being so reckless!"

"I don't care what they think, Aya," Satsuki said in a clear voice, without hesitation, and the redhead pressed her lips in a worried thin line, half expecting a declaration like that. "If they won't us meet between classes and cram school at the least, then they can't stop me from skipping them both altogether. They were asking for it when they tried taking the last of my freedom away." The dark haired girl's face was impassive but her green eyes were glaring at a spot in the wall. Aya's own softened and she sighed in defeat.

"I can't say I'm not touched by how important it is for you to hang out with me but you're ruining your relationship with your parents, not to mention your permanent record." Done with spray-painting, Aya neared Satsuki to pick up a backpack riddled with button pins that had an overused skateboard strapped to it as it hung from one of the pointy feet of the overturned dusty couch in the clearing. She started picking up the spray cans littered around. "Don't brush aside important things like that so easily. We've only known each other for a short time, you know." She threw the backpack with the skateboard over a shoulder when she'd gathered all the cans.

"It doesn't matter. You're the only one who understands." Satsuki's statement held meaning only the two could relate to. They looked at each other with the hidden desperation of neglected children, briefly recalling a memory they shared. The accident, a malicious presence, the hospital room, their meeting, sleepless nights, getting to know each other, ending up sharing the same secret.

Aya looked away first as she felt the need to fix her beanie as she always did when she was nervous. "So stubborn," she called Satsuki under her breath, a feint of a smile in her voice as she decided to let the matter go for the time being. "So, what do you think of my street art?" She lifted a toothy grin to the shorter girl, showing pride for her hard work. "Sends the message across, doesn't it?"

"I thought spray cans were bad for the environment. Isn't the paint made out of toxic chemicals? That kind of contradicts the entire point." Satsuki raised an eyebrow at Aya, knowing that she was sometimes airheaded enough to make mistakes like that, despite being an obnoxious environmentalist.

"Heh heh heh, I already thought about that." Aya grinned, taking one can out of her backpack to throw it over to Satsuki in one smooth motion. "That's why these are recycled. I filled some old cans with various organic compounds to produce different colors."

"Organic?" Satsuki caught the can effortlessly like she was used to Aya's sudden movements and inspected the thing with suspicion, having the feeling that Aya put some dubious ingredients inside.

"Well yeah," Aya beamed proudly, "Like grinded flower petals, charcoal, sea salt, shark oil, desiccated squirrel semen—"

"AH!" Satsuki immediately let go the can as if stung, letting it clatter to the ground, and frantically started wiping her hands on the front of her dark green uniform skirt. "Sounds organic alright," she concluded with a twitching attempt of a smile so she wouldn't insult Aya's handiwork.

"Satsuki! Don't just leave it like that! There's enough litter in this overly polluted city as it is!" Aya chided her, hurrying over to retrieve her spray can.

"Sorry, it slipped," the shorter girl excused herself with a completely unapologetic disgusted face as she checked her hand for any residual smell from the creepy object. "Just try to keep concoctions like those away from me. I just remembered my squirrel allergy."

"You have a squirrel allergy?!" Aya exclaimed worriedly, completely believing her stoic friend.

"A terrible one. Can't even stand the sight of them," Satsuki deadpanned, furthering her ridiculous claim, "It's a mental thing from that one squirrel accident I had as a kid."

"That's terrible! I'm so sorry! I didn't know that! Are you alright?!" Aya fretted, circling Satsuki to check for hives or any other symptoms of an outbreak. "It's a good thing that can was mainly mold, fungi and white powder from dry dog leavings. I hope it didn't have any desiccated squirrel semen residue from the mixing bowl I used."

Feeling her innards churning, Satsuki hoped for a change of subject. "So, what do you have planned for today?"

"I was thinking of spraying over the newly built gas station two blocks from here, but I usually get caught when I go at it in crowded areas right in the middle of the day no matter how fast I've gotten on the board." Aya laughed it off as she reached back and onehandedly unhooked the skateboard from the straps on her backpack.

"Then how about the graveyard?" Satsuki said with a completely impassive face as she started walking out of the abandoned tram tunnel. Momentarily stunned by the weird suggestion, Aya nervously hopped on her skateboard in a hurry to catch up to her.

"The graveyard?! I can't vandalize a place like that! That's totally wrong on so many levels!" Aya protested as she reeled around on her back wheels to face the other girl.

"Not that. I just meant we could hang out there," Satsuki clarified, continuing on her way as a gaping Aya rode her skateboard slowly beside her.

"But, Satsuki, even around this time of day, there might be a lot of _them_ there," Aya approached the subject carefully, a worried expression on her face, "Knowing that, why in the world would you want us to go there?"

"I'm just curious about something," Satsuki trailed off, looking ahead as a gentle breeze blew with the soothing sounds of ruffling leaves and the memory of a pair of dark lazy eyes in the school corridor came to mind.

Aya pushed herself forward on the board with one foot, eyeing her friend carefully. With a sigh, she decided there was no use arguing. "Okay, fine. Just don't blame me if you freak out and cry."

"Who'd cry?!" Satsuki turned abruptly to yell at her companion, only to find her laughing several feet away on her skateboard, red hair and jersey mischievously swaying in the rush of the wind.

\- xxx -

"Saatsukii~" Aya whined, examining a patch of grass on the ground in her boredom. "What are we even waiting for?"

It was already sundown. Satsuki sat on the steps towering over the graveyard, seemingly expecting something to happen, as Aya lazed about behind her on the grass surrounding the small Buddhist building perched atop a hill. Already running out of things to talk about, since Satsuki looked distracted and barely answered her treehugger friend's suggestions about picking up litter for recycling every Sunday or bathing stray animals and leaving them on people's doorstep, Aya looked down from the hill to the gravestones bellow. They were buzzing with noise, which would usually go unheard by a normal person. She moved her gaze to Satsuki's frowning face. The girl was trying to ignore the voices, trying to ignore the chattering apparitions that every other person would fail to notice even if they tried. But Aya and Satsuki knew they were abnormal, their abnormality being what started their unlikely friendship and glued them together. It was what Aya found pride in, calling it their "super special ESP ability", but Satsuki deeply dreaded.

They could see ghosts.

Ever since they accidentally passed each other on the same crosswalk on their way home from their entirely different schools and were hit by a presumably drunk bus driver. They were the only ones to survive out of the driver and 27 passengers riding on the bus. And so the two of them ended up in the same hospital room with only a couple of cracked ribs, concussions and the same survivor's guilt. Both of them could remember one other thing beside the pain of the impact and the blood-churning feeling of bone cracking – a suffocating dark malice, creeping up their beings and seizing up their very souls. While Aya was comfortable in believing the initial police report about the driver being drunk, Satsuki was convinced that something else entirely had caused the supposed accident. That was part of the reason why she actively avoided being around the spirits she could now clearly be able to see around her to the point where she somehow started to fear their presence.

"Hey, Satsuki, I don't know what's the point of standing around a creepy cemetery all day like a couple of complete weirdoes but I doubt it's working to cure your ghost phobia," Aya voiced out the obvious. "Let's go somewhere else before it gets completely dark and you piss your pants, okay?" Aya was simply worried that Satsuki might freak out if a ghost randomly decided to pop out of the dark beside them.

Satsuki turned around to glare under her dark side-swept fringe at Aya for daring to mention her only weakness. "Not yet. It's almost time."

Aya paused in the middle of opening her mouth to speak again, wondering what could be possessing her friend to act like this all day and whether it was possible for a ghost to possess someone. "Time for what? Is something supposed to happen?"

"That's what I want to check. Let's hope I'm wrong," Satsuki simply said, turning back to stare down ominously at the cemetery.

"I really don't get you sometimes." Aya sweatdropped. Her friend was being awfully cryptic today, even more than usual.

It was gradually getting darker and crickets were already chirping when the two girls heard the roaring of motors. Jumping to their feet, they squinted in the darkness and managed to make out a group of men entering the graveyard below, bellowing with laughter as they parked their motorcycles.

"Aya! We need to hide! Quick!" Satsuki urged her when she noticed the group of men starting to ascend the steps to the hill the two of them were standing on.

"Hide?! Why?! We should just leave already!" Aya relented as Satsuki ushered her behind the corner of the small Buddhist building.

"Well I'm sorry to inform you, but our only route down this hill is occupied by a bunch of scary bikers at the moment." With one last nudge from Satsuki, the girls could no longer be seen as they crouched behind the building.

"But why should we hide when we can just walk briskly down the steps and past these guys like normal people?!"

"Shh! They'll hear us!" Satsuki shushed Aya's complaints and the girl pouted, deeming her shorter friend unreasonable.

There were sounds of bustling, things being thrown around and movement as the men made themselves at home in front of the small porch of the building. A fire cackled when they lit a worn down metal container filled with litter and a foul smell of burning trash, cigarette smoke and alcohol filled the air. Aya and Satsuki braced themselves from the stench and listened quietly.

"I'm glad we found such a great place!"

"Yeah! And it's all thanks to our Ryu-san!"

"No one comes here..."

"There are convenience stores nearby..."

"People don't complain about the noise..."

"We're free to do whatever we want!"

The men yelled out with glee as Aya and Satsuki shared a look of alarm. This was some kind of a biker group, that was obvious, but with each word they sounded more and more like a bunch of roaming nighttime hooligans. Aya was beginning to feel glad that they didn't cross paths with them down the hill steps, but she was also starting to worry if she and Satsuki would be able to leave anytime soon without them noticing.

"But lately there seems to be some brat wondering around here..." one of them said and Satsuki visibly perked up to listen with attention.

"Whaat!?"

"Hey, are you serious? If Ryu-san finds out about it..."

A loud noise of rock shattering and something large hitting the ground sounded over the hill. The girls' initial thought was that the delinquents had started a brawl but the men remained quiet as if they'd been silenced by someone.

Stomp! "Some brat's been coming to my best place without my permission? How should I deal with him...?" There was a sound of shuffling as the delinquents passed over the bridge to the neighboring hill. "Looks like I need to teach him to have the proper respect for Ryu of the Wooden Sword!"

"R-ryu-san! You've arrived!"

"Yeah, I just got here."

The voices sounded farther away and the girls allowed themselves a peek from behind the corner from where they saw a tall figure with a regent hairstyle and a wooden sword towering over a broken tombstone on the neighboring hill as the men fussed around him.

"That guy!" Aya spoke behind Satsuki. "Ryu of the Wooden Sword. I've heard that name before. There's a rumor at my school that we once had this gang leader upperclassman that used to beat up people with his wooden sword. He's probably graduated before I started there but I'm sure it's him! Him and his group of delinquent followers from Banshou High!" Satsuki turned to match Aya's worried expression. "This is bad, Satsuki! We have to get away from here! Let's go before they notice us!"

"Right." Nodding in the dark, Satsuki rose to her feet to retreat with Aya. Even though her instincts told her to stay and wait to see if her theory was right, if her classmate Manta wasn't lying. She wanted to check if Oyamada Manta could really see ghosts just like she and Aya could. If he could, he was bound to return to the cemetery and if he did show up, she'd be able to find out another thing that she wanted to make sure of even more – whether he was haunted or not. That was the only explanation to why he could suddenly be able to see ghosts, just like what she thought caused her and Aya to gain that ability in the first place. And if Manta really was haunted, it would be a clue to her own predicament and Manta would have some explaining to do. And if Satsuki managed to gain a better understanding of her and Aya's situation, she would know how to reverse it and rid herself of the ability to see the unnatural and bear the feeling of dread that accompanied it.

Taking another step from behind the corner, Satsuki came face to face with the short boy she'd been waiting for all day – Manta was before her, armed with a polaroid.

"Wha–?" he voiced intelligently as they blinked stupidly at each other.

"Oyamada?" Satsuki managed to say as if checking she wasn't seeing things.

"Kaname-san?" Manta was first to come to his senses. "You were the one who stormed out of class this morning, weren't you? And then you didn't come back. Everyone thought you suddenly felt sick or something... but then what are you doing hanging out at the cemetery in the middle of the night?! You ditched school, didn't you!" he quickly deduced the right situation.

"It's none of your business," Satsuki snapped back, crossing her arms.

Aya shushed them, pulling the two back behind the small temple before any of the delinquents could hear their verbal fight.

"Why are you here anyway? Did you come to laugh at me too?" Manta regarded her with suspicion.

"Anyone would laugh if they saw you with that thing looking as if you're planning on annoying the eternal rest of the spirits," Satsuki retorted, motioning to his instant camera. "You should've never bragged about seeing ghosts in the first place." She shook her head.

"I never bragged! I did see them! And the new guy is able to see them too!"

"The new guy?" Satsuki asked as the image of a dark calm gaze surfaced in her consciousness. "So he really was a new student... Wait. He can see them too?!"

"Don't tell me you also...!" Manta caught up with her train of thought and guessed her little secret.

"Definitely not!" Satsuki denied with certainty. There was no way she would allow her scorned ability to be revealed so easily. Her belief was that the more she ignored something, the more likely it was to go away. But if Manta found out and told their classmates, she was going to be labeled a ghost geek and her ability to see ghosts would become a permanent fact that everyone would know her by.

"Um... Guys?" Aya squeaked in a small voice and they turned their attention to her only to notice a tall dark shadow looming behind the redhead's quivering form.

"Who the hell are you?" asked Ryu of the Wooden Sword as the three of them were about as ready to scream.

"Ah, no, I, uh... was just passing through... So, uh... d-don't mind me and, uh..." Manta was the only one who could manage to spit out a jumbled mess of excuses as the two girls were on their knees cowering behind his tiny back.

"Oh, I see... It's you, isn't it? The foolish brat who comes to hang out here." The man grinned evilly, glad that he'd found the one trespassing on his turf so quickly.

"That's... What are you talking about?" Manta couldn't find how he could escape a situation as grim as this when Ryu and his men rounded him.

"This is our Best Place. I'll make sure to thoroughly beat that right into you."

"N-no need... It's okay..." Manta could barely speak from fright.

"No need to hold back," Ryu told his henchmen as they advanced in slow grim steps towards Manta.

Just when Manta was about to scream, Satsuki stepped out from behind him, determination in her eyes as she faced the delinquents with a slight trembling of her hands.

"Satsuki! What are you doing?!" Aya hissed from behind Manta, motioning for her to step down.

"I'm getting rid of my cowardice," Satsuki answered firmly, stilling her hands in fists to her sides as she narrowed her eyes at Ryu of the Wooden Sword.

"This is no time for that! Don't be stupid!" Aya was becoming frantic in her yelling as she tried to convince Satsuki to come to her senses but the dark haired girl didn't listen. "You don't even know how to fight! Come back here and hide behind the midget!"

"Who are you calling a midget?!" Manta regained his ability to speak properly and yelled at Aya. "Who are you anyway and why are you covered in funny smelling paint?!"

"I'm Nibutani Ayame and the most of the smell's probably caused by the dry white dog leavings powder." Aya's calm explanation was met with Manta's clearly confused expression.

He blinked twice, figuring out the reason for Aya's eccentric attitude and dubious appearance. "So you're a random dirty hobo?"

"Hey, you brats! Don't just ignore us!" Ryu screamed, silencing the two behind Satsuki before Aya could make a retort. "Don't you know it's disrespectful to ignore people older than you? It seems like you need to be taught some manners." He raised his wooden sword and pointed it straight at Satsuki's face, making her breath hitch in her throat.

Satsuki knew she couldn't fight, but that didn't mean she couldn't save Aya and Manta from a beating. It was better than running away from her fears, she decided right then. Feeling someone bump her shoulder, Satsuki turned to Aya's grinning face as she stood beside her in a silly crouch with the skateboard in her hands, ready to smack whoever came at them painfully with the side of the board. Returning her smile with a content smirk, Satsuki raised her fists, desperately trying to remember any moves that she might have seen in action films, and the two got ready to return the favor to Manta for lending them his 80cm back when they were busy cowering in fear.

Realizing what the two were doing, Manta sucked it up and yelled at them, "Don't do this! You're just a bunch of girls! You're no match for them!"

The moment he said "girls" something came over the delinquents and their entire demeanor changed. Breaking formation, murmurs spread among them, and their leader Ryu pulled back his wooden sword, stepping closer to the girls to see them better in the darkness of the cemetery. As a cloud moved lazily from the obscured full moon, dim light shone over the group and Ryu's eyes widened. A moment's breath passed as Aya and Satsuki exchanged glances with Manta without dropping their stances, confusion marring their faces.

"They're girls," Ryu concluded, his features softening, and the delinquents exchanged looks of surprise. "The trespassing brat brought girls to our best place," he repeated hollowly as if to reconfirm that impossible fact. "That makes me both happy and jealous that it's never happened to us in the first place. Why don't any of you ever bring girls to our best place?!" He turned back sharply, startling his gang, which frantically searched for lame excuses to cover up that they hardly knew any girls that would gladly accept to come to a graveyard in the dead of night to hang out with a bunch of stinking delinquents. "No matter!" Ryu palmed his face and then ran a hand along his long regent hairstyle to smooth out any stray hairs. "I'll handle things from here, you guys get the brat." Ryu looked at the confused Satsuki and Aya, his eyes burning with an intensity that made them uncomfortable and overly conscious of themselves, as the rest of his gang rounded them to advance towards Manta.

"W-what's happening?" the boy stammered, backing away to the small back-to-back circle that the girls had created.

"No clue, but they're starting to creep me out." Satsuki's eye twitched as she turned away from Ryu's burning gaze.

"Only just now?!" Aya exclaimed in disbelief, since every other normal person would be weirded out by these guys from the get go.

Their leader suddenly lunged towards them and Aya and Satsuki braced themselves, only to notice he was down on his knee with one hand over his overly large hairy chest and the other behind his back as he seemed to be bowing to them with an incredibly unnerving aura of a love-struck creep practically oozing from him in waves.

"Oh, my sacred _angels_ descended to earth!" he bellowed out of the blue, his hands flying around in exaggerated gestures as his eyes glossed over under his grossly long thick lashes.

"What's he doing?!" Aya whispered to Satsuki in alarm as they banded closer together, careful of the man kneeling before them. "I thought he was going to jump us!"

"How should I know!" she snapped back, equally as ticked off.

"The moonlight shines so brightly upon your heavenly beauty!" Ryu gasped in an overly exaggerated manner as his group of delinquents cheered to his intricate advances. "And I! I am unworthy of your divine presence, and yet! I have been deeply enamored!"

"Is this from some sort of play? Why did he suddenly start reciting?" Aya whispered again, annoying Satsuki further.

"No, stupid! It looks like he's hitting on us. Lamely," she quipped, dread evident on her face, since she'd never been hit on by a highschooler before but she never even wanted it to happen either, especially with some gross hooligan in a graveyard.

"I beg of you!" Ryu didn't even pause to make note of how rude was their hushed conversation. "Would any of you please consider the possibility of dating a simpleton such as I!" He whipped out a couple of clumsily bowing daisies out of nowhere, as if hurriedly ripped out of the ground just a second ago. "I swear it to you that I will worship the ground you walk on if only you gave my unworthy self the slimmest of chances!" If possible, his look intensified and the feeling of being pressured threatened to crush the two girls.

"Ugh. Pass." Face purple, Aya involuntarily backed away a bit behind Satsuki and looked at her expectantly so she wouldn't have to deal with the demanding man herself.

"Are you for real?" Satsuki finally spoke out to him and Ryu's attention was immediately on her. "Confessing to two girls at the same time, are you an idiot?!" The girl raised her enraged face to scowl at the surprised delinquent. "Despicable. You are the worst."

Ryu's face fell and his flowers withered, petals falling to the ground, and his regent hair mimicked them, greasy locks cascading down his face as he visibly hunched over.

"No one would ever date a guy like that," Satsuki spat out mercilessly, delivering another blow to Ryu's sensitive heart. "Curl up and die for your transgressions, you scum to womankind!"

Ryu practically sprawled over the ground in front of Satsuki and Aya, writhing in heartbroken pain and self-pity as his men tried to console him with hollow words of sympathy.

"Wasn't that a bit overkill?" Manta said, still wary of the men surrounding them.

"What if you make them mad?" Aya freaked, grabbing Satsuki by the elbow.

"He deserved it, the bastard." Satsuki snatched back her elbow to fold her arms, face still distorted in disgust.

Ryu groaned from the ground, his hands twitching, and they barely heard him mumble, "If that's how you're gonna be..." before he jumped up to his feet, tear-stricken, with a quivering lip and terribly bitter about being flat-out rejected with such honest disdain. His face twisted into a scowl as a petty plan formed in his head. "Get the brat!" he ordered, pointing at Manta behind the two girls and before they could react, the surrounding delinquents took a hold of Manta's small form as he began kicking and screaming at them to let go, just to receive a fist to the stomach, the tremendous pain and lack of breath successfully silencing him.

"Oyamada!" When Satsuki and Aya tried to intervene, their hands were restricted behind their backs by two tall highschoolers that refused to budge no matter how much the girls struggled. "Why are you doing this?! Let him go!" Satsuki yelled at Ryu, but her words fell on deaf ears.

"Neither of you will go out with me, yet you both gladly take romantic strolls around my best place together with this trespassing shorty," Ryu began muttering under his nose, his body shaking with the welled up jealousy. "Isn't that unfair to an honest grown man like myself!" he yelled out behind suppressed tears, causing the three kids to stare dumbly at him.

"Is he serious?" Aya whispered with a sweatdrop.

"I can't believe it." Manta cried animatedly, unable to cope with the fact that he was going to have to pay for not only the new guy in his class' mistake of lazing about the delinquents' hangout, but also for his classmate Kaname and her hobo friend rejecting the delinquents' leader and his lame advances. It was ridiculous.

"This is what it's all about?!" Satsuki got mad at all over again, her fists clenching as she stilled in the grasp of the tall highschooler restricting her arms. "Just because things aren't going your way, you think it's fine to take it out on some short kid?" Manta's "hey" for constantly rubbing in his height was ignored. "You're acting like a child! Don't you have any pride!"

Ryu's anger reared its head and his nostrils flared when he snapped back, "I'll show you pride!" He turned to two of his largest comrades. "Ballboy! Muscle Punch! Let's give the brat a taste of our pride!"

"No..." Manta's face blanched as the three men slowly began walking towards him and all he could do was shake his head and beg. "Please, no!"

Neither his pleading, nor the two girls' screams could save Manta from the severe beating he received that night.

\- xxx -

It was late when Satsuki finally managed to reach home. After Ryu and the delinquents used Manta as their own little punching bag, forcing Satsuki and Aya to watch as they didn't have the strength to free themselves and help the short boy, the three of them parted ways in solemn silence, feeling bitter about the injustice they'd suffered, Manta most of all. Releasing a breath to calm herself down as she felt her frustration growing again, Satsuki rubbed the bruises on her left forearm, one of the many that formed because of all her struggling against the iron grip of her captor, and briefly paused at the entrance of the Shinto shrine she was about to enter, marked by the tall red torii gate – Funbari Shrine.

"I'm home," she said to no one in particular and bowed her head lightly as she ventured inside the shrine grounds and past the pair of lion dog protector statues guarding the entrance.

The buildings were of traditional architecture with the typical gabled roofs. There was a purification fountain near the entrance with water flickering in the moonlight. A wide path of unevenly shaped flat stepping stones guided by decorative stone lanterns led to the large hall of worship with its three swirling commas symbol over the veranda. Hanging prayer plaques clinked softly in the midnight breeze next to the offering hall fronted by a pair of large bells draping over the entrance with their thick ringing ropes. The willow trees with long elegantly swaying branches were caressing the surface of the pond near the worship hall. Grass, bushes and cherry trees in full bloom were scattered throughout the grounds, soft petals gently freefalling in puddles of dim pink in the dark, with the largest and oldest of them all, the great tree surrounded by a sacred rope with paper streamers. Its branches towered over the hall of offerings and the innermost building with protruding forked finials and logs from its gabled roof – the heart of the shrine. Standing behind the large hall of worship, raised from the rest of the buildings and protected from public access by a fence – it was the sanctuary of the enshrined deity. All of these sites around the shrine grounds created an eerily beautiful scene of simplistic divinity but Satsuki was quick to avert her gaze, painfully used to the seemingly tranquil view of the shrine that she'd been sweeping and up-keeping all her life as it was her duty as a member of the Kaname family which had been serving Funbari Shrine for centuries.

Making her way around the office building and down a winding path behind it, still in the the premises of the shrine, Satsuki came upon a small traditional house partially hidden from the shrine by the surrounding greenery. She rounded the house and maneuvered trough the garden, climbing onto the veranda at the back of the house. Pulling the sliding door to the living room as quietly as she could, Satsuki was just about to sneak inside the small crack unnoticed when the lights suddenly turned on to reveal a man in his sleeping robe leaning on the wall with a stern look on his face.

"Father!" Jumping out of her skin, Satsuki panicked and the sliding door to the living room rattled loudly when she inelegantly hit her forehead on the doorframe and crashed down to the wooden floor, clutching her head in pain.

"Nice of you to finally show up." Sarcasm oozed from the man's words as he looked down upon her. "How was school?"

Satsuki resumed a formal sitting position on her knees and dropped the hand nursing her forehead to stare up at her father, Kaname Setsuna, the shrine priest, while saying nothing.

"Oh, that's right, I remember!" The man crossed his arms and nodded to himself. "Your homeroom teacher called today, saying that you felt sick but never even went to the nurse's office and completely disappeared. Strange isn't it?"

Satsuki pointedly looked away from him, frowning and still refusing to speak, less she indulged him in his annoying way of berating her.

"But wait, there's more!" Her father laughed to himself fakely. "Later after that I found out you didn't even go to cram school, even though it costs so much for us to send you there. Isn't it weird?"

Satsuki concentrated on the heap of sitting cushions in the corner of the traditional living room and started counting the creases as a way to distract herself from her father's oncoming tirade.

"And here you are, after an entire day of absence from the face of the Earth, trying to sneak in back home in the dead of night with bruises up your arms." All amusement dissipated as the stern look returned to the priest's face, boring holes in the girl's head as she hugged herself to hide the incriminating spots of purple with her hands. "Are you resorting to fights now, just to spite me?" His voice demanded attention but she still refrained from meeting his gaze. "Satsuki. You dislike the idea of priesthood and training to be a shrine maiden, ignoring your kagura lessons and calligraphy, refusing to participate in rituals or to practice divination and exorcising techniques. Your mother and I understood this under the condition that you dedicate yourself to your studies, yet you also skip school and ultimately run away from any responsibilities. Tell me, Satsuki, how do you expect to get by in this world we live in if you continue in this manner?"

Receiving no reaction as his daughter continued to frown at the sparse furniture, Setsuna sighed in resignation, sensing that the girl would grow to become even more difficult if he left her to her own devices.

"Look. I'm not saying that troublemaking skateboarder from that run-down school you've become friends with ever since the accident is the source of your problems, like your mother seems to be convinced, but if you continue to act this way, I'm going to be forced to reevaluate my decision about allowing you to associate with a troubled child like her who seems to be indirectly influencing your attitude."

This time Satsuki's full attention was on him, as she jumped up to her feet. "You can't do that! It's not like my grades have dropped!"

"And I don't intend on waiting for that day to come, either." Her father wasn't inclined to compromise, both him and his wife having high expectations of their only daughter. If she wasn't going to continue the family tradition and become a priestess, then the next best thing was securing a good standing in modern society with a flawless education. There was no other way for them to make sure Satsuki would manage to survive on her own, since common people like them who knew only how to serve a shrine didn't have any connections and were often tight on money. Pushing her to become the best among her peers was the only way they knew how to help her.

"You don't get it do you?" Satsuki faced her father with eyes bearing all the built-up frustration inside of her.

"Enlighten me then," he urged impatiently, warning her with a look to choose her words carefully.

"The reason I'm running away is because I feel trapped!" she suddenly yelled out, "My future's being decided for me, even when I don't have to be a shrine maiden! The school I go to was predetermined! You're watching what I eat, what I wear, how I behave, what I do, who I talk to! Do you even know Aya's my only friend?! We don't even know each other from that long! I've always been alone because I'm always studying, I'm never up to date with social trends, I don't have anything in common with my classmates and they think I'm some weird shrine nerd because I have a permanent stone face. They see me as awkward and reserved, I practically live in a shrine and I have freakishly perfect handwriting from writing so many fortunes and talismans before every big event. That's not how normal kids live!" By the time she'd spilled everything that pained her heart, her knuckles had already gone white from clutching fistfuls of the sides of her uniform skirt and tears filled her eyes. "You have no idea how suffocating it is to be different, to be alone and have your entire life planned out for you, to be controlled."

Her father continued staring at her teary face with a calculating gaze, before he spoke up again, "Friends don't last forever. There are more important things. You'll grow out of this childish way of thinking you currently have and you'll see things my way. Now if you're done being unnecessarily dramatic, go to bed before you wake your mother. She had a hard time falling asleep while worrying about where you disappeared off to. Instead of letting useless things cloud your mind, you should consider being more mindful of the people who truly have your best interest in mind." Pushing himself from leaning against the wall, the man turned to walk out of the traditional living room, pausing to address his daughter one last time. "I expect this to be the last time I need to have this conversation with you. Goodnight."

Feeling deflated, Satsuki stared after her father's retreating back with a dumbstruck tear-stricken face which distorted into a deep frown when his words fully registered into her mind. She never expected him to fully understand her but the fact that he was stubbornly refusing to even consider her feelings drove her mad beyond reason. He was a blind man with a blind ambition for his shadow of a daughter. Satsuki vowed to herself to find a way to change his mind, or to at least escape her situation. It didn't even matter at this point if it would ruin her relationship with her controlling parents. She wanted to be able to choose her own path without being led by anyone.

In her point of view, there was nothing wrong with being in a middle-class family. She never minded the struggles that came with that lifestyle, so her aspirations would never be as high as her parents wanted them to be. What weighed down on her mind the most was that she would never be acknowledged by her own family, she would never be seen for who she was. There was nothing noble in humility and her parents would be satisfied only when she drowned herself in ambition, losing herself and any chance of making friends in the process. Not that she didn't believe she could do it, not that she couldn't see herself at the top of some fancy company with a fortune behind her name, it was just that if she did as she was told, if she bowed her head and let her parents lead her to a life that would be the desire of many, the person she imagined she would become, the person she saw was a heartless woman, absorbed in her work, blinded by ambition and ultimately, all alone. Utter loneliness was the bane of her existence and she would never let herself become that woman. Not as long as she had Aya by her side. She would never forgive herself if she lost Aya, her first real friend.

\- xxx -

A couple of hours later not even sleep could calm her troubled mind as she tossed and turned in her futon bed on the tatami mat floor. Thoughts of her conversation with her father, Ryu's weird hair, the delinquents beating up Manta, Aya's ethereal Mother Nature graffiti, swaying treetops and the transfer student's calmingly lax dark pools coming alive in her mind, stirring her awake every time she drifted to slumber, along with the barely audible sounds of whispering in the darkness of her room, the kind that one could only label as imaginary and almost sounded like they were calling her name.

A soul-piercing scream echoed through the traditional house, reverberating in Satsuki's ears as she pushed herself off the pillow, fully awake and alert, her head whipping around the darkness, scared and with no clue to what could have caused that terrifying sound at such an ungodly time of night. Having watched one too many horror movies since she never had friends to play with instead, Satsuki feared the worst and clung to her covers, wrapping herself in a cocoon as she regarded every twitching shadow and dark crevice with guarded suspicion from her futon in the middle of the room.

 _Come..._

"W-what was that?" Satsuki voiced emptily to the darkness of her room, but her only answer was the hollow ticking of the alarm clock on the low table by the window where her books and notes lay in organized heaps. "Must have imagined it 'cause I dreamt up that scream again." She looked at the annoying ticking device with a displeased frown, a bit ashamed that she was resorting to talking to herself.

It was past two – the witching hour. Not the first time that she woke like that in the middle of the night. Either it was some annoying spooky whispering or a woman's voice screaming in anguish, but Satsuki was already used to being scared awake at that time of night. It started happening when she got back home from the hospital after the accident, after she realized she could see and hear ghosts, starting with the spirits of the driver and passengers of the bus that hit them. The night Satsuki and Aya woke up in the hospital the ghosts tried to tell them something important before they were silenced by something unseen and their spirits disappeared. That was why Satsuki was sure she was haunted somehow. Suddenly being able to see ghosts was bound to be a bad sign, especially when it happened after surviving an unbelievable accident. For freshman middleschoolers like her and Aya to manage to live out of an entire bus of passengers that hit them head on, they must have somehow cheated death and Satsuki was certain there were going to be consequences for that. Survivor's guilt was it? Nevertheless, the thing that silenced the spirits of the dead passengers was out there and Satsuki could sometimes feel its presence, making her and Aya's lives miserable for jumping their graves.

 _Come..._

The hairs on the back of her neck stood on ends and a chill ran down her spine when Satsuki heard that strained whisper again, beckoning her from the unknown. She froze when shadows danced around the floor in front of her and she jumped and tripped over the hem of her covers, falling back when the windows rattled loudly, snapping open by a strong gust of wind that whistled through, ruffling the flying curtains, spilling the organized heaps of paper sheets all over the room and opening some books on the table by the window to ruffle their pages. Leaves and petals rose from the tousled treetops, some of them entering her room in a twirl, as windblown clouds rushed across the sky away from the obscured full moon which shone brilliantly upon the shrine grounds, illuminating the pink cherry trees and casting moonlight upon the raised sanctuary and its gabled roof with forked finials and short decorative logs along the ridgepole, bearing the three-comma motif.

 _Come!_

Satsuki's heart was drumming in her chest and she stood on her feet, clutching the covers around her shoulders to protect her both from the cold wind and the unsettling creepiness of the situation. She took a few steps back until she hit the wall and gulped loudly, breathing heavily to calm herself and start thinking rationally. Someone was calling for her, had been calling for her all this time that she'd been hearing voices at night. Only now was that someone more vocal than ever. Because of the full moon or her troubled heart, she could only guess.

She remembered her mother mentioning something during her shrine maiden training, about how the shrine had been different a long time ago, that it was burnt to the ground by outlaws. Then the Kaname family, their ancestors who held a small fortune at the time, helped rebuild the shrine as gratitude for the shrine taking care of one of the orphaned children who had served there, a child they found had been a member of the Kaname family long lost to them after the parents were robbed and killed on the road. Sadly, that child was already gone regardless. Her mother had said that a lot of people were either murdered or died in the fire, the violent deaths marking the land upon which the shrine was rebuilt impure. Because of that notion for a long while the shrine received no visitors at all, causing the Kaname family and its little wealth at the time to dwindle with the absence of benefactors. Many years of stubborn Kaname members, dedication, purification of the land and exorcising ceremonies later, Funbari Shrine was back to its previous mediocre glory, but her mother had voiced her suspicions that unlike the people of Funbari Hill who had forgotten the stigma, the spirits of the old shrine might have only become placated, intent on protecting the shrine, less someday something else threatened their domain.

With a pang of guilt, Satsuki realized that this time that threat was what she embodied – the one Kaname who had no desire to remain and serve the shrine, refusing to become a shrine maiden. She was an only child. If she didn't inherit her parents' responsibilities, who was going to take care of the shrine after the two of them passed away? It all suddenly clicked into place now. The reason she was hit by a bus and survived – it was a warning from her ancestors to reconsider her decision and dedicate herself to becoming a priestess. They were also probably what silenced the bus passenger ghosts. And the reason she could suddenly see spirits was because that had been a malicious supernatural attack, because she's haunted, haunted by her own predecessors. Aya was just caught up in it by mistake. Her survival was the real miracle. Her ability was the real wonder. Satsuki's was forced upon her, a punishment. That probably was why Aya had no real reason to fear the spirits they could see while Satsuki always had the troubling feeling that something was terribly wrong.

"Damn spirits..." Satsuki clenched her teeth and fisted the covers over her shoulders, pulling the blankets off of her, angrily throwing them to the ground. "Like hell am I going to live by someone else's standards!"

Determination in her eyes, Satsuki thrust open the door of her wall-mounted sliding-door closet, searching through the drawers for something her mother gave her when she was little and starting her shrine maiden training. It was a bracelet of polished black wooden beads with a red string knot coming out of the largest one. As a child of the shrine she was supposed to wear it at all times for protection, praying and rituals, but she rarely did so since it would make people think she was an even bigger religious nerd for always wearing some old-fashioned trinket. Clutching it in her right hand, she stormed out of her room and down the stairs, not even bothering to change out of her thin slack sleeping robe despite the cold wind outside. Her parents were sleeping soundly as always, their daughter being the sole person to be bothered by ghostly wails, so she slipped on the first pair of sandals she saw by the entrance and ran outside in the whistling winds alone, threading through the winding path from her house to the shrine.

The wind wailed as it blew through and between the woodworks of the buildings comprising the shrine and Satsuki ran past the office building, stepping over fallen cherry blossoms, which ascended as she kicked her feet and the wind picked them up, petals swirling up in the night. Rounding the worship hall's veranda with its large black three-comma symbol glaring from the overcast shadow, Satsuki passed the hall of offerings, ignoring the dark figures that she imagined appearing on the reflection of the mirror on the inside of the hall behind the hanging ringing bells, and headed straight to the rear of the shrine, to the innermost building behind the hall of offerings, guarded by a symbolic low fence. It was considered the most sacred building at the shrine, closed to the general public and intended purely for the purpose of housing the symbol of the enshrined deity.

Satsuki halted in front of the intimidating visage of the raised main building, its gabled roof towering above her as she stood clutching the bead bracelet her parents entrusted her, struggling to prepare herself for the reckless course of action she was throwing herself into. Whispers and murmurs from invisible sources eerily travelled the air around her, beckoning, tickling her curiosity, yet sounding alarms in her head that hearing them was unnatural, that playing along was dangerous, not to mention forbidden. The doors to the sanctuary were usually kept closed, except at certain religious festivals when the priest, her father, and sometimes the priestess, her mother, entered only to perform rituals. The rite of opening those doors was itself an important part of a shrine's life and it was unheard of to venture beyond them at a night as mundane as this one. Satsuki had no right, her parents would be furious if they found out. She'd only ever been allowed to sweep the leaves in front of the sanctuary and she'd never, not even as a child, not even accidentally, stepped foot inside as her parents had taken upon themselves the full up-keeping of that particular building. Not that there was something kept hidden, like they were housing an actual god there, the god sanctuary was simply a religiously restricted area, a sacred space not to be thread upon lightly.

Stilling her resolve, Satsuki cast aside all doubts as she went past the low fence and ventured forth. She had decided that it was time to put a stop to the random screams that woke her in the middle of the night, it was time to stop being perpetually scared, to stop living in fear that something terrible might happen and do something about it. But even more importantly, she had to rid Aya of the dangers that threatened them. Dangers that weren't meant for a cheerful carefree soul like Aya's. Satsuki owed it to her. She would protect her friend even if it meant crossing hell's gate. Her father might not have listened to her when she tried to stand up against his warped ideas of nurturing her into his vision of a proper adult against her will, but Satsuki wouldn't let a bunch of vengeful spirits push her around as well. She would make them listen and stop their incessant pestering. For Aya's sake.

The doors creaked open and air flew inwards, raising dust off the untouched wooden floors. As expected, the inside of the relatively small building seemed hollow and empty, the high wooden pillars with intricately arranged support beams, paper-covered windows and formal lack of furniture causing it to look bigger than it actually was. The quiet accompanied by the background sounds of the wind whistling outside didn't make it seem less eerily intimidating and the only light that entered was from the overcast moon, stretching through the opened entrance. Satsuki reached for one of the old oil lamps conveniently left by the door and lit it up to cast some light in the darkness that followed after she closed the front doors. Opening the second pair of doors flagged by two unused paper lanterns with three black commas, Satsuki entered a smaller room with a large scroll on the opposite wall and a wide old wooden altar with streamers in front of it that bore objects representing the enshrined deity. On the lower level of the altar lied three worn-out boxes in varying sizes rectangular in shape which were covered by symbolic cloths, all decorated with the shrine's three-comma symbol. Behind the boxes between a pair of incense holders stood a small symbolic statue of Funbari Shrine's deity that was pictured on the tall wall scroll - the medieval Japanese depiction of Hachiman, tutelary god of warriors and patron of writing and learning, drawing his bow on horseback.

Pausing briefly as she gazed upon the altar and Hachiman's grand visage on the paper scroll, Satsuki felt the compulsive need to bow her head and pray instilled into her since she was a child, but she remembered her mission and soundlessly stepped onwards. She may have entered a forbidden area, but she was there with a purpose, which in her book excused that minor religious transgression. Setting the oil lamp aside and slipping on the bead bracelet over her wrist to free her hands, Satsuki dove for the cupboards beside the walls. Pushing away the thought that her parents were sure to find out about her coming here and ground her for life when they notice the misplaced objects, she took out an unopened pack of tealight candles, arranging them in a circle on the floor, fronted by one of the incense holders she moved from the altar to set up a couple of incense sticks. She didn't know if it was the creepy silence backed by the whistling wind outside, the creaking wooden beams, the irrational fear of being found out or the insecurity about whether what she was doing would work or fail, maybe it was a bit of everything piling up on her consciousness, but Satsuki's hand was visibly shaking as she lit the ring of candles one by one with the help of a pack of long matches while murmuring a simple chant her mother taught her under her nose.

"I call upon rain to wash your anger. I call upon fire to warm your heart," she kept her voice low and steady despite her quivering, pronouncing each word of her mother's pacification ritual clearly, "I call upon earth to bury your troubles. I call upon wind to blow your worries. I call upon thunder to still your unrest."

After the last candle flickered to life, Satsuki placed herself on her knees in the middle of the circle of candles, looking the very definition of composure, if not for the slight tremor of her voice and fingers as she finally set the two incense sticks alight.

"I call upon rain to wash your anger. I call upon fire to warm your heart. I call upon earth to bury your troubles. I call upon wind to blow your worries. I call upon thunder to still your unrest."

Her tone was wavering, since she felt silly, talking to herself in the candlelit dark of night, seemingly all alone in the desolate sanctuary. The voices she'd been hearing were silent, since the moment she had stepped into the sanctuary, as if either she'd imagined them or this place was truly sacred ground and no spirit of the dead could stain it with its presence. Satsuki had to remind herself of the present situation and willed herself to continue as she clapped her hands together with the bead bracelet around the touching palms and her brows furrowed over closed eyes in something between concentration and a frown. She had to get serious if she wanted this to work, especially when Aya's life was in danger because of her stubbornness.

"I call upon rain to wash your anger. I call upon fire to warm your heart. I call upon earth to bury your troubles. I call upon wind to blow your worries. I call upon thunder to still your unrest," she repeated louder, with more confidence, and her frowning narrowed eyes snapped open to glare at the invisible entities she imagined surrounding her, unable to reach out and harm her easily, since she was a physical entity, a living being. " **Zai!** " Thrusting her arms forward and disturbing the thin lines of smoke coming out of the incense sticks, Satsuki spread out her hands, thumbs and index fingers still touching. She managed to keep the bead bracelet around her two palms from falling as it rattled from the movement. "Begone, spirits!" she bellowed, "Your time's long past! I call upon the five elements of nature to guide you to the next world!"

A stagnant silence followed as Satsuki stood frozen in her silly position, waiting for some kind of feedback. Perhaps she had jumped to the purification part of the ritual too soon. The ritual and its variants she'd read in the old notes kept at the shrine. It was intended for the pacification and purification of lesser spirits that clouded a small area, at least that was what her mother told her, but she'd never seen her use it in her practice as priestess. To be honest, Satsuki never believed in spirits and the next world in the first place, not to mention how often she shirked her ritual studies, so this was the first time she attempted exorcism as a trainee and so she had no idea what to expect. But now she had sight, she could see spirits and that probably meant she could communicate with them better than she might have before. What if her meager experience wasn't enough for the exorcism to work and her communication ability only served to agitate the spirits of her ancestors by letting them know she attempted to vanquish them to the other world altogether. Satsuki doubted she was a decent shrine maiden, since she made every effort not to become one, and if there was such a thing as spirituality, her ability as a shrine maiden was probably miles below the average. It was ironic however, how in order for her to free herself from the predetermined destiny of becoming a priestess and live a life of her own choosing, she had to rely on what little she remembered from her shrine maiden training. She probably wouldn't have bothered doing anything about the spirits of her ancestors and let them have her way with her if Aya's life wasn't also on the line.

Several heartbeats later nothing happened and Satsuki let out a strained sigh, dropping her stiff hands back to her lap as her frown softened back to impassivity. She couldn't decide whether she was glad that the exorcism didn't backfire and anger the spirits or disappointed that it didn't work at all. Wasting no time, she chalked it up to her lacking as a shrine maiden and decided to try again another night as she extinguished the incense sticks and started blowing out the tealight candles so she could put them away and go back home to sleep.

The pleasant thoughts of her warm futon and the promise of sleep were disrupted when the candles she blew out suddenly lit back up by themselves, their flames flickering larger than before in an unusual blinking pattern. Alarmed, Satsuki pinched one of them with dampened fingers for good measure, but all she achieved were some second degree burns on her fingertips as the candle refused to die down. The whispers sounded again, each one drowning out the rest, making them all indistinguishable as they all steadily rose in volume, deafening her senses and completely silencing Satsuki's racing inner thoughts. Before she could process what was happening, flames engulfed the walls of the room, as if like magic, trapping her in a ring of hellfire. Satsuki panicked, jumping to her feet and turning in circles, frantically searching for the smallest escape route as large beads of sweat cascaded down her face and body from the immense heat. There was no time to think what could have caused this, whether spirit or living. She had to get out fast, before the sanctuary burned to the ground along with her.

A large flickering shadow grew over Hachiman's burning wall scroll on the opposite wall, vaguely cast by a large figure among the flames towering over Satsuki's tiny height. The girl's breath hitched in her throat and her heart raced even faster than when the room initially lit on fire. The flames shadowed the figure's face, but it was evident that this was a woman, nearly transparent, in burnt shrine maiden robes, with endlessly long ebony hair and chalk white skin marred by several wide charred gashes mixed with blood. As numerous shadow figures danced around the walls and floorboards, probably the souls from which the whispers came, Satsuki realized the voices had become clearer and she could make out their words. They were screaming in anguish and horror, pleading for help, asking some unknown entity to spare them, not wanting to die. They were the echoes of the previous shrine that once stood on Funbari Hill, the shrine that burned along with its inhabitants, killed in a single night of horror.

The purification ritual had failed. Satsuki had tried to meddle in a situation the scope of which she didn't completely comprehend. These were vengeful spirits, specters of wronged people, hundreds of years in age, and all she managed to accomplish was to annoy them with her naïve act of foolishly attempting such a weak exorcism by herself. Satsuki could figure out that much but it didn't help her devise a way to spare herself from the same fate these spirits suffered and she sure wasn't planning on burning alive so early in her life.

Scared beyond her wits and shaking, Satsuki raised a helpless panicking face to the tall intimidating figure of the transparent dead woman as one of the burning pillars crashed to the ground, sending embers flying past them like angry glowing fireflies. The ancient shrine maiden spirit raised her face, obscured by the shadows of her charcoal fringe, to reveal a grotesque mixture of ghostly pale skin, burnt flesh and a protruding jaw bone. Satsuki was just about ready to piss herself when the woman opened her dry split mouth and her hoarse low voice traveled around the room, echoing through Satsuki's very being.

" _I must relay a warning of grave importance...!"_

Too much for her to handle, Satsuki felt lightweight and her eyes rolled backwards as her body grew limp and tumbled ungracefully to the ground, sparing her from the surreal reality.

* * *

 _It seems it's written but we can't read between the lines_

 _Hush, it's okay, dry your eyes_

 _Soulmate, dry your eyes_

 _Cause soulmates never die_

Placebo – Sleeping With Ghosts

* * *

If you leave a review, I would be the happiest in the world~!


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